Thankful

If you're wealthy, George W. Bush's election gives you a lot to be thankful for. Joe Conason hits the highlights in Salon:

To offset those generous new breaks for Soros, Barbra Streisand and Eminem, the White House wants to eliminate the deductibility of state and local tax payments. For most middle-class taxpayers that will constitute a far larger burden than any benefit from the Bush plan.
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Although he neglected to discuss any such proposal during the presidential campaign, when he emphasized his commitment to expand health coverage, Bush reportedly plans to eliminate corporate deductions for health insurance coverage. With company health plans already under tremendous pressure from increasing costs, the elimination of deductibility will make insurance unaffordable for most companies (and will certainly give all employers an excuse for eliminating those benefits). That will leave wage and salary earners to fend for themselves against the big private insurers.
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According to the Washington Post, Bush and his advisers have finally figured out how to pay for the trillion-dollar cost of privatizing the system. They're just going to ignore it by taking the costs "off-budget." Or, as one of the plan's proponents at the Cato Institute explained, the White House economists will use "creative accounting" to hide enormous holes in future budgets.
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So smile again, a bit sardonically, as you sum up what middle-class Americans, red and blue, can expect as the second Bush regime begins: Higher taxes, exploding deficits and the end of health coverage as we know it.

There's just so much to be thankful for, isn't there?

I'm sure the citizens of the United States are going to have all sorts of fun "bargaining" with enormous insurance companies for "fair" (stop it, you're killing me) health insurance rates, which we'll all be paying for out of our incredible shrinking paychecks as the federal government chews into our earnings to help finance permanent tax cuts for the plutocracy.

When Bush talks about an ownership society, what he's talking about is the happy day when he and his cronies own society. 59 million of you just gave away the store. Remember that as you become part of the underclass, working to support a tiny, viciously uncaring minority that's most interested in bleeding you white before starting in on your children to finance and fight its bloody foreign adventures.

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving. Start making your list of things to be thankful for next year so you can start crossing them off as we begin our descent into darkness.